Question for mages deciding Arcane vs. Fire

[gakpad]

Ignoring away fights where fire/arcane have a clear advantage over one another (Yorsahj, Spine), of course, when you chose what spec to go with 4.3.2, how much did the raid DPS gain of Focus Magic play into your decision?

[Unitos]

I'm not the mage in my guild, but arcane seems to under perform enough on most fights, that our mage is always fire. So, I would say Focus Magic was the least of our concerns.

[gakpad]

I only ask because barring certain fight mechanics arcane is neck and neck with fire in single target dps. So for fights like morchok, Zon'ozz, Hagara (if you're stacking ranged in the middle), Ultraxion, (blackhorn, to some extent), and Madness, where movement is relatively limited and/or on-demand burst is a plus, the difference between the two is relatively minimal. 3% crit to another caster dps doing 40k+ from Focus Magic is equivalent to almost an extra ~1500 dps depending on the class you're giving it to I could see easily being a deciding factor in the issue.

[zaheer12a]

I'm not sure where you're getting your statistics from. From what I can see fire is superior by far, not only on normals but also on heroics. Just take a look here:

http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/

The choice really comes down to your ability to play Fire good enough.

[avengingbt]

It all comes down to raid composition for me. Being in a 10man group, if we're missing the 3% damage buff then it's pretty obvious which spec I'm going to use.

If all buffs are covered (We sometimes run 2 mages) I will go fire. That way I get DI from our lock, FM from our arcane mage and do crazy dps as fire

[klaps_05]

"Ignoring away fights where fire/arcane have a clear advantage" - there is no fight where arcane and fire are equal or w/o advantage.

it all comes down to whether or not you want to hinder your raid - if you want to be optimal you play the optimal spec.

the only fight where focus magic has any affect at all is spine heroic where SP's need it to reset shadowfiend faster. that's about as far as helpful focus magic is in all encounters. obviously if someone is going for ranks you should be arcane so he can benefit from it.

[KHShadowrunner]

I keep hearing so many conflicting things when in regards to the 3% buff from arcane. All you seem to see on the forums is "fire fire fire fire fire fire" yet the last time I asked, the answer was immediately "arcane, 3% is boss".

If you are in a group where you are the ONLY means of providing the 3% damage buff, is it worth it to swap to fire in any circumstance? or is the extra damage worth it?

We're giving decent attempts in at H Yorsahj but I've been going fire (due to a random pick-up ret pally), but when the pally isn't there, is arcane the way to go?